Act Like You Love Me
by You'veGotMeAndJesus
Summary: Tamara is in the processes of trying to regain her memory of Summer Bay after being rescued from her kidnapping, but she is making little to no progress. She has just told Kyle and Casey that she is leaving. This is a one-shot based on Shawn Mendes' "Act Like You Love Me" about Casey's feelings about the situation and his final desperate request of Tamara.


***Author's Note: Hey, everyone! I know this happened a super long time ago. You'll have to excuse me. I am watching from America and so I am not even close to being caught up to the show. Don't ask how I got involved in the show in the first place. It's complicated and it has to do with Jordan Rodrigues... :) Anyway, I'll let you read this now. Bye!**

Act Like You Love Me:

"I'm leaving."

In Casey Braxton's opinion, those two words had to be the most painful combination of words in the English language. Especially when they were coming out of the mouth of his girlfriend. Well, sort of…

It was complicated.

Tamara continued to speak more after those two words, but all Casey could hear were those same two words repeating over and over.

He finally snapped out of it when he saw her start to walk out of the apartment that once belonged to the two of them. "Tamara, wait!" he exclaimed as he attempted to block her path. "Please!"

However, while he was trying to block _her_ path, someone else was trying to block his.

His brother.

"Kyle, get out of my way! I have to stop her!"

"Casey, what's the point? What are you going to say to her that's going to change her mind? What haven't you already tried? She's made her decision."  
"Kyle, please. I just need to talk to her!"

"Casey, you –"

"I don't care! Move!" he pleaded as he finally broke free of his brother's grasp. Kyle once again tried to grab his arm, but Casey shook him off and began running to the end of his driveway where Tamara was about to walk out of his life. He knew that what he was about to ask of her was crazy, but he couldn't live with himself unless he knew he'd tried every possible option. "Tamara!" he called out to her. "Tamara!"

As he caught up to her, Tamara turned back around to face him, ready to rebut whatever desperate plea he was going to try to use on her. "Casey, I told you I have made up my mind. I'm sorry this –"

"When are you leaving?" he asked, slightly out of breath from catching up to her.

"Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?"

"Casey, as I said, there is really no point for me to stay here any longer. I have to get back to my family. To familiarity."

"Yeah, I know. I get that. But can you just do me one more favor? I know it's going to sound ridiculous, but as you can probably tell by now, I'm kinda desperate."

"What is it, Casey?"

"Spend the night with me."

Tamara's eyes shot wide open and just before she began to speak, Casey explained, "Not like that. Just stay with me in the apartment tonight. We can watch one of your favorite movies and we can get some of your favorite pizza from Angelo's. Then you can sleep in the bed and I'll sleep on the couch."

"Casey, we've already tried this."

"No we haven't. Not like this. All I've done since I've been back is put pressure on you and that's not cool. I don't wanna do that this time. I just want to hang out with you before you leave. That's it."

"I don't know, Casey."

"Please, Tamara. I couldn't live with myself if I didn't do everything I could to keep you in my life for as long as I could. If it was someone you cared about in your situation, wouldn't you do the same?"

Tamara pondered that for a moment and Casey could see her resolve slowly dissipating from her features. "Yeah, I guess I would. Okay. But this is it, Casey. If this doesn't work, then I really am leaving," she said matter-of-factly.

"That's cool, I understand. So do you want to meet back here around 7:00 tonight?"

"Yeah, that works."

"Okay, cool. I'll see you then," Casey told her as he waved and began to turn back toward the Braxton house.

"See you then," she replied with a slight smile before walking in the opposite direction.

 _'_ _There's still hope,'_ Casey thought as he walked back toward the house.

When Casey got to the Braxton house, he saw Kyle sitting at the dining room table. "What are you smiling about? What did you say to her?" Kyle asked Casey, a slight edge in his tone.

"Relax. I didn't do anything to upset her. I just asked her if she would hang out with me tonight and she said yes," he responded as he took a seat on the couch, facing his brother.

"Case, do you really think that's a good idea?"

"Kyle, I have to try. No pressure. Just dinner, a movie on the couch, some conversation, and she leaves. That's it. I know that I haven't been handling this situation well and I am sorry for that. But if she is just going to leave my life for good, I need to just have one more night of normalcy. It can't end like this."

The brothers held each other's stares for moment before Kyle responded, "I just hope you know what you're doing, mate."

"I won't hurt her."

"Okay." Kyle got up from his spot at the table and headed out the door. Before he closed the door, he made one final comment. "I hope this works, Case. For your sake and for hers."

"Me too."

Tamara was due to arrive any minute and Casey had been spending the last several hours making sure that the house was perfect. The pizza from Angelo's was setting on the coffee table along with three of Tamara's favorite movies. The only thing to do now was wait. Waiting was not a good thing for Casey.

Waiting meant that his brain had time to wander.

This whole thing with Tamara's memory loss had absolutely rocked his world. He was so crazy about this girl. Part of him understood that she was suppressing memories that had to do with her kidnapping, but part of him was being absolutely destroyed by the fact that the girl he loved had no recollection of him.

He knew that what he was doing tonight was crazy. He knew that it would probably be awkward for her. But he did tell himself, his brother, and her that he was not going to pressure her into feeling anything that she didn't already feel. He just wanted to spend some time with her before she left. He kept telling himself this so he would feel a little better about the whole thing.

If he was being honest with himself, Casey was being selfish.

All he wanted was to have Tamara back in his life the way it should be. He just wanted to curl up on the couch with her, watch movies with her, talk with her, laugh with her…

Be happy with her.

He wanted this so much that he was willing to stage an evening together, even though it meant nothing to her. He wanted the evening to be as close to the way things used to be as possible. Maybe if they had one last good night together, he could pretend, just for a moment, that she loved him as much as he loved her.

Maybe if he could get her to _act_ like she wanted their life, like she wanted him, then maybe he could go on. Maybe he could live off of that one memory. Maybe he could pretend that what would happen tonight would be real.

Because if the last memories that he had of Tamara were of her rejecting him and claiming to not even know him when he loved her so much, he didn't think he could take that.

After what seemed like hours of Casey's thoughts drowning him, Tamara finally knocked on the door.

Casey bolted up off the couch, gripped the door handle, crossed his fingers for good measure, and slowly opened the door to reveal a timid looking Tamara. "Hey!" he exclaimed with a smile.

"Hi, Casey," she responded. "Are you going to let me in?" she questioned him awkwardly.

Casey then realized that he had been blocking her entrance. "Oh, yeah! Sorry. Come in. I've got everything all set up. Your favorite pizza from Angelo's along with some of your favorite movies are on the table over there. I thought we could eat first so we could talk and then we could put in a movie. But if you would rather eat and watch the movie then we could definitely –"

"Casey. Eating and talking is fine." She interrupted. "Everybody's been so focused on me ever since I got back. I want to hear about you," Tamara explained as Casey put some pizza on her plate.

"Really? Okay."

The two ate their pizza and talked for quite a while. They talked about their families, their hobbies, and whatever else randomly came up in conversation. Even though Casey had already heard most of what she talked to him about, he pretended like he had never heard it before. Casey thought that the evening was going pretty well so far. He hadn't talked about their past together or proclaimed his undying love for her once during the whole night! Considering what he had been like for the past several days, that seemed like quite an accomplishment to him.

Things even seemed to be going fine during the movie. Thankfully, none of Tamara's favorite movies were romance movies; otherwise, things could have taken a very awkward turn for the both of them. Tamara didn't even try to push him away when he put his arm around her, which he did very slowly so that she would have plenty of time to object.

After the movie was over, Casey and Tamara got ready for bed. Casey was in the processes of getting comfortable on the couch when Tamara softly said, "You don't have to sleep on the couch if you don't want to."

Who was Casey to object?

So he got into bed with her, if you could call it that. Casey was about as far on the other side of the bed as he could possibly be without falling off the edge. After about five minutes, he made a bold move by barely ghosting her arm. When she didn't respond to that, he laid his hand fully on her arm. After several more minutes, he finally settled his arm around her waist. And for a moment, everything was perfect.

Until he realized that it wasn't.

So much has happened in the last few months. He and Tamara had been through so much together. To be quite honest, he was a little mad at her when he first found out that she had forgotten him due to the emotional and physical trauma she endured. He thought she was stronger than that.

He thought _they_ were stronger than that.

But here they were.

But after the initial anger wore off, the feeling that overtook Casey Braxton was despair. The love of his life went through a horrific experience because of him. She was so different and she couldn't even see it because she couldn't remember what her life in the Bay was like.

She couldn't remember him.

All he wanted was for things to be normal again. He wanted her to love him as much as he loved her. As nice as tonight was, he knew that it wasn't normal.

He knew she was going to leave.

It was finally time for him to stop kidding himself. At least he did every last thing that he could to try to save his relationship with the girl he loved. Because of that, he could find some way to move on someday.

But that someday was not today.

"Tamara?" he asked her.

"Yeah?" she replied groggily

"Can you do me one last favor? If you have made the decision to leave, could you please do it before I wake up?" Tamara turned around to face him. "I can make peace with you leaving, but I just can't watch it happen," he explained, barely holding himself together.

She held him tightly with her piercing stare that he could have seen through the darkest of nights. "Yeah."

Casey took his hand off of her waist and lightly brushed her face with his thumb. He couldn't hold it in anymore.

The two spent the next hour lying in bed, Tamara allowing Casey to hold her and stroke her hair while he quietly cried himself to sleep.

The only words that were spoken for the rest of the night were, "I'm sorry," and "I know."

The next morning, Tamara worked her way out of Casey's hold on her. She knew what she had to do, even though it broke her heart to do it. She got out of bed, gathered her stuff together, took a couple minutes to write a quick note to Casey, and went somberly out the door.

Tamara had thought that she had managed to do all of this without waking up her former lover; however, Casey woke up as soon as he could no longer feel her presence. He heard her get out of bed. He heard her put all of her stuff in her bags. He heard her scribble something down on a piece of paper. And he heard her sniffle just before she shut the door to what used to be their apartment.

It took everything he had within him to keep his eyes shut and pretend that he was asleep. He wanted so badly to jolt out of bed and beg her to try one more time or to stay for one more night. But he couldn't prolong her misery, or his, any longer.

He had to let her go.

After she left, he opened his tear-filled eyes, walked to the kitchen table, and read her note:

Casey,

I tried. I really did.

I'm sorry.

~Tamara

And that was the end of that.

 ***** **So that's my story, guys! I hope you all liked it! If you did, or if you didn't, feel free to let me know! I love reviews, messages, favorites, or whatever other methods you use to tell me what you think! I know the idea is a little unconventional, but I highly recommend you listen to the song by Shawn Mendes with this same title. It follows that pretty well. Thanks, everyone!**

 **Always remember,**

 **~You'veGotMeAndJesus**


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